Public Bill Committee

[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]

Further written evidence to be reported to the House

PPE 04 The Electoral CommissionSupplementary
PPE 05 The Electoral CommissionFurther Supplementary

Clause 12

Election falling with canvass period

Eleanor Laing: I beg to move amendment No. 17, in page 10, line 20, leave out from shall to end of line 26 and insert
amend the electoral register by means only of an additional entry at the end of the appropriate section of the register, until the appropriate publication date of an election..
This is a fairly uncontentious part of the Bill. The clause is perfectly reasonable and we do not argue with it but, as I have said several times during our proceedings, the problem is that of clarity. An anomaly in the clause could cause considerable problems and even disfranchise people if an election were held during the latter half of the year during the canvass period. The amendment is therefore intended to clear up the anomaly. It is technical, and I say at the outset that it is of a probing nature and if the Minister can convince the Committee that the anomaly can be dealt with in another way, possibly by a Government amendment, which would deal with matters more efficiently, I would be delighted to withdraw it.
While we welcome the intention to make it easier for people to register to vote, the anomaly arises whereby the voting ability is adversely affected between July and December in respect of people who are new to an area and therefore new to an electoral register because of rolling registration. As I am sure all members of the Committee know, the annual canvass of electors is conducted during the autumn and is compiled on the basis of residents at an address on 15 October in a particular year. The new register must be published by 1 December.
For example, during the autumn of 2007, there was considerable speculation that there might be a general election. It is not for me to commiserate with Ministers that there was no such election. [Interruption.] Some Labour Members seem happy about that, while others seem sad. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wirral, West says from a sedentary position that I have not seen the polls. I am sure that such matters are outwith the scope of the amendment. However, I have seen the polls and I am quite happy with them.
During the early autumn of last year, when making concrete plans for a possible general election, the electoral administrators were faced with the real possibility of an election taking place during the annual canvass period. There was much concern among them about whether a general election held before 1 December 2007 would use the register drawn up in October 2006 with the rolling register additions made during the year, or whether the 2007 canvass information could be used. I hope that I am being clear, but if I am not, it is because the whole situation is not clear, which is the very point that I am making.
The Electoral Commission subsequently, and quite rightly, issued guidance to electoral administrators, which stated that the 11-day rule for registering to vote before an election did not apply to the annual canvass. In other words, electors may have completed canvass forms, but they would not be added to the register until the new one was published in full by 1 December 2007. This meant that any elector not on the old register would have had to register by rolling registration by 17 October 2007 in order to vote at a general election held on 1 November 2007, or he or she would have been disfranchised. I am not concerned about 2007that has been and gone, with no electionbut this could happen in any future year when there might be a general election during the latter half of the year.
Electoral registration offices were advised by the Electoral Commission last year to use the information about new voters on return canvass forms to contact those new voters and ask them to fill in a rolling registration form. As long as this was done by 17 October 2007, they would appear on the register and would have been able to vote at an election on 1 November 2007. I am sure that the Committee will well understand that this is causing a lot of confusion. An electoral system which is not definite and which has any area of doubt in it is not a fair electoral system. In a close election that could cast doubt upon the very legitimacy of a Government. We do not want that in the United Kingdom; we need a system that is absolutely watertight, so that people know that when they have an entitlement to vote, they know how to vote, when to vote and that if they are on the electoral register then they are on the electoral register.
Under the current system, people may or may not be on the electoral register, which also produces an enormous burden upon the administrators who look after the practical workings of a general election. I say general election, because most other elections are on a specific date, when we all know well in advance that there will be an election on 4 June or 3 May. That is not a problem because the former register would have been in force from the previous 1 December and all electoral registration officers and anyone else concerned with elections would know for months that they were heading towards an election. However, with a general election, we sometimes only know for three weeks. To have this scramble to ensure that the right people are registered in the right place during the three weeks of a general election campaign puts the entire process into doubt. It is that doubt in the process that Opposition Members are constantly trying to avoid.
I am not making any party political points in my remarks about clause 12this is nothing to do with party politics. When other parties look at the problems that might occur, they will find the same as I have in looking at this. The statistics show that, had there been an election last November, something like 1 million people could have been disfranchised. That is a very worrying situation. Electoral registers are updated by the process of rolling registration, which allows electors to go on or off the register as they actively ask the council to change their details. That is quite rightwe have always supported rolling registration because it produces a more up-to-date and, therefore, accurate register. The problem that occurs, specifically for an election in the autumn of any year, is that while residents may be under the impression that their new details are on the register, they will not be if there is an election in November. If they take the additional step of filling out a rolling register update, they will not be able to vote in their previous constituency either, so people will fall between two stools if they try to do the right thing.
The people who will be most adversely affected are those who have recently moved home and students, who frequently move. Almost every year, students move from one address to another. Imagine the upheaval for someone who is in charge of a student house and who therefore has to fill in the details of some 20 or 25 students who move in or out every October. If there was a general election in a November, we might find that the wrong people were registered and that the right people did not get a vote at all. That matters because a few hundred votes here or there in a university town could decide the outcome of an election, and therefore it is a matter of great concern. I can see a particular hon. Gentleman who represents a university town grumbling in the wings, and quite rightly so. If the hon. Member for Cambridge comes up with a better solution than my amendment for getting round the problem, I will gladly support him.

Nicholas Winterton: Order. The hon. Member for Cambridge is very much in the Committee; he is not in the wings.

Eleanor Laing: I beg your pardon, Sir Nicholas. I almost said that the hon. Gentleman was to my left. I meant that geographically. I tried to avoid using the phrase on my left, just in case metaphorically and politically he is not, because I am not sure about that.

David Howarth: I am.

Eleanor Laing: I think that the hon. Gentleman is confirming that he is on my left, which is quite likely. He is both geographically and politically on my left and not in the wings at all. I do apologise to him.
I return to my concern, which was expressed publicly and vociferously by John Turner, the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, who warned of the worst logistical challenge in living memory for electoral administrators. In an interview on the BBCs Politics Show on 30 September 2007 he said:
nobody sitting in my place could guarantee that it will be less than trouble-free, and the real problem is that we could run into uncharted water in terms of these problems that weve just been talking about.
What he had been talking about was the effect of the rolling register. We have also been warned by others who are involved in the running of elections that clause 12 could inadvertently cause an enormous problem.
The last thing that we want in Britain is the hanging chad situation that they had some years ago in the United States. Surely, we want respect for our electoral system, and we do not want challenges to be made to the outcome of elections. We also need certainty. It is perfectly possible that the hon. Gentleman, for example, might win or lose his election in a university town by some 100 or 200 votes.

David Howarth: Unlikely.

Eleanor Laing: It may be unlikely, and I will not upset the hon. Gentleman with possible predictionsin any case, I am not in any position to make such predictionsbut it is technically possible. It is also technically possible that the hon. Gentleman might hold the balance of power in this place. There might be equal numbers on either side of the House apart from the hon. Gentleman. What if there was a challenge to the outcome of his election? I use the hon. Gentleman only as an example, because, sitting as he is to my left, he is a winning example. However, there are many such seats throughout the country, which could mean, if the outcome of an election was uncertain, the outcome of the entire general election could be uncertain. We have been warned about that in advance, so we must take that into consideration now.
The problem is in the renumbering of the register. What happens is that electoral registration officers renumber the register, therefore creating uncertainty. Of course they renumber the register when they produce a new register; that is perfectly reasonable, logical, essential and part of a process. However, what if they do that in the last 11 days before polling day? Political parties carrying out canvassing will not be able to match up the numbers on the previous register with the numbers on the register on polling day, but that is a side issue which may concern us as prospective candidates in elections and is not my main concern. My main point is that there is a danger that polling cards, for example, which have been issued prior to the 11 days before the election, will have a different number on them for some electorsthose whose numbers have changed because someone has been inserted into the register. Therefore, when polling cards have already been sent out with one number on them, if there is a new register in front of the electoral registration officer or polling clerk on the day of the election, the number might be different. If the Minister tells me that that is not the case, I shall be delighted, but it looks to me as if it is.
Another thing that I am concerned about is the importance of checking where donations are coming from, which we have talked about for many hours during the passage of the Bill. One of the ways of checking whether a candidate can accept a donation from any particular person is by checking whether that person is registered on the electoral roll. A candidate has to be pretty sure when someone wants to give £500. We all have to stop and think whether we can accept the money, and one of the ways of checking is, of course, whether that person is on the electoral register. If the person is, prima facie, a candidate may say, Right, thats great, this person is in a legitimate position to give us this money. That is fine, we have checked it. If there is any doubt about the electoral roll itself, that puts all of that checking into doubt as well. Once again, all I seek is clarity. The Bill already imposesquite rightlyconsiderable duties on candidates, agents and volunteers to check donations, to ensure that everything is absolutely correct with accepting donations. If we start messing about with the electoral register in the last 11 days before an election, it puts all of that into doubt, which is a matter for great concern.
Amendment No. 17 requires the electoral registration officers to amend the register to take account of new voters. We want to make sure that everyone who has a right to vote is given that right in practice, so of course electoral registration officers should go ahead and amend the register to take account of new voters, but those new names should be put at the end of the register.

Jonathan Djanogly: Has my hon. Friend seen anything in the Committees documentation on electoral registration officers asking about this issue? Where are they coming from?

Eleanor Laing: Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. We have received evidence from electoral registration officers that they are worried about the matter and the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators has warned of the worst logistical challenge in living memory if matters were all to go wrong. We do not want the process to go wrong. The point of amendment No. 17 is to identify a possible loophole in the Bill and to help the Government to overcome the problems. The practical result of the amendment would be that the electoral registration officer would put the new names at the end of the register, thereby avoiding the need to renumber it until the next month, and following a general election.
I have proposed how the problem could be obviated. There could be a much cleverer or more practical way of getting round it. If the Minister and those immersed in the Ministry of Justice who know exactly how the system works can come up with a better solution than the amendment, I shall be delighted because it is merely my quick attempt to highlight the problem and suggest a way in which it might be put right.

David Howarth: Good morning to you, Sir Nicholas, and to members of the Committee. I wish to put on the record my thanks to the Government for clause 12. It attempts to resolve a problem which, as the hon. Member for Epping Forest said, affects a number of places, especially university towns, by changes in the electoral register in the canvass period in two respects: first-year students might not be on a register, and second and third-year students will have changed address, as a result of which there will be terrible confusion about where their polling card should go.
There is not a problem in the clause but, if there is, I am sure that the Minister will deal with it. However, there is a problem with the amendment, which is that it would remove the words
shall take effect as from the beginning of that day
from proposed subsection (6). Without those words, there would be a fundamental problem in the Bill.

Michael Wills: I welcome you back to the Chair, Sir Nicholas. The hon. Member for Epping Forest rightly drew attention to misuse of the rolling canvass. I congratulate her on investing the clause with the significance of the highest order that few of us might have guessed before she started her remarks. She has raised real issues, but it is precisely those matters that the clause is designed to address. The hon. Member for Huntingdon asked whether the electoral administrators had been consulted. Yes, they have, and so has the Electoral Commission. All agree with our approach, which is that the provision will reduce its administrative burden in the event of an election being called during the canvass period.
Incidentally, the hon. Lady keeps referring to John Turner and his nightmare. That was hypothetical and would happen only if administrators had to issue rolling register forms. They will not do that, so she will be relieved to hear that nightmares are off the agenda. She asked whether the electors number will change when the register is republished in December. Yes, it will at that point, but it will not change when the notice amending the register is published. She made a specific point towards the end of her remarks, which I will address in some detail because it is important. It relates to the concern that clause 12 could result in a mass of new people being added to the electoral register shortly before an election and therefore it would be difficult to scrutinise their applications. That is a valid concern. However, in resisting the amendment, I hope to be able to demonstrate to her, and the Committee, that appropriate procedures are already in place to allow applications for registrations to be scrutinised by the public. I hope that in doing so, I shall bring the clarity that the hon. Lady seeks.
It is important that, in addition to the checks being made by registration officers, members of the public and parties can check a persons eligibility to registerto help prevent fraud, among other things. At present, the provisions set out in the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 provide a means for an electors eligibility to register to be scrutinised. Regulation 27 provides that an elector registered in the area of the local authority may make an objection to a persons registration, whether before or after that person has been added to the register. Regulation 28 provides that an application for registration, including one made on a canvass form and any objection to a persons registration, shall be made available for inspection at the registration officers premises, until the application has been determined. Regulation 29 sets out the procedure that must be followed by a registration officer when he or she determines applications for registration, or objections to a persons registration without a hearing. Under this regulation, each registration officer is required to keep a list of all the applications for registration that still have to be determined. While there is no obligation to do so, in practice, each registration officer compiles this list by reference to the street name and the ward of the registrant and allows members of the public, or political parties, to inspect it, together with the registration applications.
Once an application for registration has been determined, clause 12 requires the registration officer to add new electors to the appropriate section of the register by the publication of a notice, which then becomes part of the register. It contains the name, ward, street and house number of each new elector, or person, removed from the register. That notice is published five days before the poll; it is available to political parties to inspect, or they can request that they be supplied with a copy. It is therefore already possible for members of the public and political parties to scrutinise applications for registration made before the poll.

Jonathan Djanogly: Is it not currently the case that political parties are given a copy of the new list? Is the Minister now saying that they will have to request a copy?

Michael Wills: It is absolutely the case that they will have to request a copy if they so wish, but it is readily available. I am not sure that that is an additional burden on the volunteers with whom we have been so rightly concerned throughout these proceedings.

Jonathan Djanogly: Would that be at nil cost to the candidates?

Michael Wills: No, it will not be at nil cost but it would be at a marginal cost. [Interruption.] I stand corrected, it will be at nil cost to the candidates. In other words, the costs would be borne by the electoral registration officer.
It is possible for these applications already to be scrutinised. It is also possible to see which new entries have been added to the register for the election by looking at the published 13BB notice. As mentioned, this amendment would also delete proposed new section 13BB(7) to the 1983 Act, which serves a useful purpose. It is quite feasible that an election may be called late in the canvass period, where registration officers have completed their annual canvass and wish to bring forward the publication of the register from 1 December to coincide with the poll. Deleting this subsection would leave the effect of the provision unclear and may mean that registration officers will not be able to deal with canvass forms in the usual manner, which is the quickest way of compiling the register.
We need to get the right balance between enabling as many people as possible to register to vote and being able to check that those who register are eligible. We believe that the current arrangement for making a list of applications and objections available for inspection and publishing a list of changes to the register achieves this end. I hope that in the light of that explanation the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment.

Eleanor Laing: I thank the Minister for his explanation. My reason for tabling the amendment has always been clarity. I am pleased by his explanation to the Committee this morning. We certainly welcome clause 12 in general, but I was concerned about the renumbering issue in particular. I would like him to confirm that I have got the following right: the register will not be renumbered during the month before an election if it falls within the canvass period. Given his undertaking that that is the intent of the clause, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Eleanor Laing: There is another area of considerable concern, to do with the way in which electoral registration takes place. It comes within the scope of clause 12 and concerns service votersserving members of Her Majestys forces, many of whom are now on active service in dangerous places. Before 2000, members of Her Majestys forces could register once in order to exercise their vote and their registration was valid for the whole time that they served in Her Majestys forces. Those service voters, and the members of their families who travelled with them, would move around the country and around the world because of the duties they undertook. When I say service voters, I am not speaking of serving people only, but of their families as well. Before 2000, being registered to vote was not an additional concern for someone in Her Majestys forces.
In 2000, the Government disfranchised thousands and thousands of people serving in the forces by making it compulsory for them to register every year. Unsurprisingly, as people were taken up with their duties on behalf of Her Majestys forces, sometimes they forgot to re-register. If someone is in a combat zone, I do not suppose that it is at the top of their list of concerns to think, Oh goodness, its 15 October, Id better register again to vote. As we all know, there are other pressures on serving officers and their families.
In the Electoral Administration Act 2006, after we complained bitterly about the situation, the Government finally conceded that registration should be necessary by members of Her Majestys forces every three years only. The way in which clause 12 deals with how the canvass is done and registration is carried out will keep the provision that people have to register every three years. When hundreds of our servicemen and women are risking, and giving, their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy in this country by fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world, putting on them the burden of having to register every three years is wrong. Those people are literally risking, and giving, their lives for the very democracy that we are talking about, but they are often not able to take part in the democratic process, because they are disfranchised by the bureaucracy of having to register again and again. That is wrong, and the Government have an opportunity to put it right.

Andrew Tyrie: This is an issue that I am extremely concerned about, and have been for several years. Clearly, the only issue that we should and can address today is the relationship between clause 12 and the methods that the Government have already put in place to try to ameliorate the problem. However, they have not fully ameliorated it, so I am not convinced. I want to know from the Ministerwe shall find outhow much thought has gone into the relationship between clause 12 and the largely consultative, ad hoc measures for addressing the effective disfranchisement of a large proportion of our service voters.
It is important to explain and rehearse how we got into this mess, otherwise we shall not be clear on how or whether clause 12 can get us out of it. The problem all arose because, inadvertently, as a consequence of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, thousands of service votersprobably a third to half of themand their families were removed from the register. They thought that they had been registered for the whole period of their service, which is what they were told when they joined, but they then discovereda few of them, much laterthat PPERA had disfranchised them. Their enfranchisement no longer applied, without there being any notification or information about how to get back on the register.
As a matter of fact, I was the one who uncovered the situation. At the time, I had two bases in my constituency, and I asked my returning officer in Chichester, casually, about the registration figures. He said, Well, on Thorney island there has been a drop in registration. I said, Oh. By how much? He said, Forty-seven per cent. About half those on the island, who are almost all service voters and their families, had been taken off the register. I raised that with the Government and the Electoral Commission, but I am afraid that I got dilatory responses.

Nicholas Winterton: Order. I shall allow the hon. Gentleman to make his point, but it goes rather wider than clause 12, which deals with registration during the canvass period. However, I understand the importance of his point, so I shall use my discretion.

Andrew Tyrie: Thank you very much, Sir Nicholas. It will be of particular concern to a large proportion of our service voters if they can have some assurance that this change will not inadvertently lead to another ill effect, as yet not thought outI have not thought it outjust as no one thought out the effect of PPERA.
I could not persuade the Government to do anything about service voters before the 2005 election. The Ministry of Defence has to shoulder some responsibility for this, because the Department was aware of the situation but did nothing about it. In the Departments defence, it was fighting a war, so one might argue that it had more important things on its mindthat is what the Ministry of Defence would argue.
Taking to heart your strictures about ensuring that my remarks are pertinent, Sir Nicholas, this is my last general point. It is particularly ironic that, as a country, we expected members of our military to put their lives at risk to extend democracy in countries such as Iraq while we were neglecting to ensure that they could vote in a general election. Furthermore, in that general election, the biggest single issue was the war in Iraq. That was absolutely extraordinary.
My questions to the Minister come in several parts. First, since he took office, has he examined the schemes that have been put in place to ameliorate the problem? I shall give time for the officials to prepare an answer. I understand the position, and I apologise to him for not telling him in advance what matters I intended to raise with him, as I can see from how he is scribbling that he regards them as important. Is he up to speed with knowing what has been done since I raised the matter previously? A number of us made a lot of noise about it in the House. Is he confident that the existing service register is functioning properly? What estimate does he have of registration as a proportion of the total service vote?
Given what the clause does to the rolling registration period, my second question concerns the effect that it will have on the level of service registration. Has it been taken into account? Have there been any discussions with the Ministry of Defence about it? Are we confident that it will have no ill effects?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or whatever the phrase is. Everyone thought that PPERA would be all right, but it had the dramatic consequence of perhaps taking 100,000 service voters off the register. The effect of the clause will not be remotely as bad as that, but I am worried that the suspension of rolling registration embodied in it might inadvertently generate some ill effects for service voters.
Is the Minister ready to answer the questions? It seems as though he is getting near that point, so I shall gladly allow him to respond.

Michael Wills: I will come to the points about service voters in a moment because, although they are slightly beyond the scope of the clause, I recognise their importance. The hon. Members for Epping Forest and for Chichester have described graphically the importance of such matters to those to whom we all owe a huge debt of gratitude. I shall do my best to answer the specific questions asked by the hon. Gentleman. Before I do so, however, we must be clear about the overall purpose of the clause. It is designed to address a set of issues, which over the past year have become particularly clear to each member of the Committee.
The annual canvass of electors takes place each year from early summer to late autumn, and the purpose of the clause concerns the circumstances if an election were called during the annual canvass period. That is not common in recent history, but, as the hon. Lady tried to persuade us, we can never be certain of anything in this life. We need to be prepared for all eventualities. If an election were called during that period, a new application for registration recorded on the canvass form would result in eligible voters being added to the register for the poll. At the same time, administrators would be required to remove non-eligible electors from the register.
As the law stands, if an election is held during the annual canvass, the register can be amended in response to applications for registration made on an individual rolling registration form up to 11 days before the election. However, administrators may register only electors who complete and submit a canvass form on the publication of the revised register at the conclusion of the canvass, which may be after an election. An application for registration cannot be accepted even where there is clear evidence that a new elector or electors have moved into the household from which the form has been returned. The Government want to do everything we can to ensure that eligible voters are on the electoral register and have their say at the ballot box. The clause helps to achieve that aim.
On the potential disfranchisement of service voters, our proposed measures shouldI say, shouldhelp service and other voters who would otherwise be caught by the existing situation. My general response to the concerns raised is that we hope and expect the Bill to be of benefit. No one can rule out unforeseen consequencesthe hon. Member for Chichester spelled out the riskbecause they are, by their very nature, unforeseen, but we are sensitive to the issues.
The hon. Gentlemans first question was about whether I have got fully up to speed on the issue since taking office. I took on responsibility for this area about three weeks ago. Am I as up to speed as I would have been had I been in post for a year? Probably not, but I am reasonably up to speed and I hope that I can give him some reassurance. If, however, there are issues that we cannot address in Committee
Mr. Tyrierose

Michael Wills: I recognise the importance of the issues, so I am happy to address concerns on the margins of the Committee and then write to all members of the Committee. I shall address some of the other concerns in a moment, but I am happy to give way.

Andrew Tyrie: If the Minister is going to come to those issues, I am sorry to have interrupted.

Michael Wills: If I do not fully answer all the hon. Gentlemans questions now, I will be happy to give way again.
I say straight away that there is a problem in identifying the degree of disfranchisement among service voters. That is partly because some of them are registered at their home address, which is sometimes difficult for electoral registration officers to determine. That is not for a second to query that there is an issue. I have no reason whatever to dispute the evidence given by the hon. Member for Chichester on the level of disfranchisement in his constituency, but I merely point out the fact that it is sometimes difficult to determine.

Andrew Tyrie: I hope the Minister will not mind if I interrupt a few times to make suggestions. I put to him the thought that I have been begging to have him place on the issue for some timea commitment to undertake a regular survey of a proportion of service voters to establish the level of registration in relation to the rest of the population. That should also include the families. If it were done, we would have a yardsticka measure.
Even if the survey did not provide entirely accurate information, even the level of change would give us a high degree of information about whether the Governments measures were working and how deep the problem that we have identified since the introduction of PPERA remained.

Nicholas Winterton: Before the Minister replies, I must remind the hon. Member for Chichester that I used my discretion earlier. I shall continue to chair proceedings with a light hand, because I know how strongly he feels, but once again, this point, in the general sense in which he is raising it, goes much wider than the clause we are debating.

Michael Wills: I accept your strictures, Sir Nicholas, but I hope that you will also extend a similarly light touch for a few sentences during which I shall address the general concern here.
The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible suggestion and I am happy to carry it forward. He may be awareI hope he isthat Ministry of Justice officials regularly hold round-table discussions with the Ministry of Defence, the Electoral Commission and others about how best to tackle the issue. There are regular drives to try to increase registration among service personnel, encouraging them to register.
I recognise that the hon. Member for Epping Forest made the important point that service personnel are often engaged in arduous, difficult and dangerous circumstances serving our country. In such circumstances, it is perhaps an unnecessary burden on them to have to remember to register and to feel obliged to do so when they have other things on their mindthat was her expression, I think. I understand that, but it is open to service personnel to appoint a proxy to vote on their behalf. That may or may not be considered satisfactory in individual circumstances, but it is available to them. It can continue indefinitely, although there are certain restrictions.
I hope that I have said enough in those few words to reassure hon. Members that we take the issue extremely seriously, as do the Ministry of Defence and the Electoral Commission. That is not to say that there is no room for improvement. I am happy, in my ministerial capacity, outwith the Committees remit

Andrew Tyrie: Will the Minister give way?

Michael Wills: I will in a moment, but I want to give this assurance before I return to the substance of the clause. I am happy to carry on a dialogue with all hon. Members who are concerned about this issue and who have service personnel in their constituencies to ensure that we get it right. It is an important matter and we want to address it clearly.

Andrew Tyrie: I met the Minister before he took office, so I know that he will take the issue seriously and look at it carefully. He has had only a few weeks to start thinking about it, and perhaps asking him to be up to speed was not quite the phrase that I should have used on the spur of the moment. The key issue with respect to the clause is whether there has been any consultation. Has there been any consultation with the Ministry of Defence? Has there been any consultation to try to establish what effect this will have, if any? That is a relevant question for him to look at, and if he said a few words about that I would be grateful.

Michael Wills: As I said in my opening remarks, we expect that the clause will help service personnel and others who will experience problems before it is brought into effect. We expect that to happen. The hon. Gentleman has made valuable suggestions for how we can improve levels of registration and ensure that, subject to the concerns expressed by the hon. Lady, service personnel are not disfranchised. We will do everything we can. We think that the clause will provide a significant improvement in circumstances should an election be held during the annual canvass period and I hope that the Committee will judge that it should be part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 13

Local returning officers for elections to the European Parliament

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Alan Reid: I welcome you to the Chair, Sir Nicholas. I support clause 13. It will make for a more streamlined administration if the European elections are run by local authority returning officers. If those elections were run under parliamentary boundaries, the returning officers would be operating outwith the area or the council in which they are senior officer. The proposals make sense and it will make for a streamlined administration if the elections are run based on local authority boundaries. However, I want to raise a concern in relation to Scotland and Wales. I understand that this year, the clause will impact in Scotland and Wales only. As a result of the order that has already been passed to change the council elections in England to the same day as the European election, council returning officers will run the European elections in England. In Scotland and Wales, however, the present rules state that the returning officers for parliamentary constituencies run the elections.
The Electoral Commission has expressed concern that, as the Bill may not receive Royal Assent until March, the change will happen within only two or three months of polling day. The commission has always expressed the view that changes in legislation that affect elections should be put in place at least six months before the election date. Returning officers in Scotland and Wales have also expressed concern that if the change was to come into effect in March there might not be enough time, because preparations for the European elections will already have started.
I want to ask the Minister what his intentions are for bringing the clause into effect. Will he take the advice of the Electoral Commission and electoral administrators in Scotland and Wales, and not bring the clause into effect for Scotland and Wales until after this years European elections?

Nicholas Winterton: Admirably succinct.

Eleanor Laing: The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute has just expressed most of the concerns that I would have expressed, having also discussed the matter with the Electoral Commission. When the Electoral Commission comes forward with concerns, we must take it seriouslyit is not doing so for any reason other than to try to make the system work better. Although I understand what clause 13 says and what it brings about, I cannot quite understand why the Government are bothering to make this change to a system that appeared to work perfectly well before. Is this because the Government have been told by the European Commission that this is the right thing to do in respect of European elections? [Interruption.] The Minister indicates that that is not the case. I accept that and will put that to one side. I am delighted, because in the United Kingdom we are perfectly capable of running our own elections the way we always have done, without any interference from those who sometimes think that they know better. However, it still puzzles me why this is necessary.

Alan Reid: I can give the hon. Lady an example of an occurrence in my own constituency during the last local and Scottish elections. The postal votes are sent out by the returning officer, but because the Scottish parliamentary constituency and our local council constituency areas did not match up, it meant that returning officers were returning postal votes to a different local authority area from that in which they operated, which caused some confusion. This new clause will streamline that process.

Eleanor Laing: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that explanation. I remember vividly the debate that we had in the Chamber about coterminosity. Members of the Committee who have never paid any attention to the workings of the Scottish Parliament or Scottish electoral issues will wonder what on earth I am talking about. Opposition Members warned that creating boundaries that are not coterminous would cause confusion at election times. At that point, we were talking about the non-coterminosityit is getting worse. [Interruption.] The lack of terminosity, if the hon. Gentleman accepts that term, between Westminster constituencies and Scottish parliamentary constituencies is bound to lead to some confusion.
According to the hon. Gentlemanhe is absolutely rightthe lack of terminosity between the European boundaries and the local authority boundaries, which is, to some extent, inevitable, is causing a problem. I accept that and I accept that the problem should be put right. However, the Electoral Commission has concerns, as the hon. Gentleman has also expressed, about the possibility of this part of the Bill coming into effect a very short time before the forthcoming European elections. I share that concern and I therefore wish to express it on behalf of Opposition Members. I am sure that the Minister will have an answer to that, so I shall allow him to give us that answer.

Pete Wishart: I welcome you back to the Chair, Sir Nicholas. I was not going to make any remarks on this particular clause until I heard the curious remarks made by the hon. Member for Epping Forest. I share the concern of the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute about the commencement of this clause. We need to hear from the Minister that there is no intention whatever of commencing this clause prior to the European elections in 2009, as we would be in a very curious situation whereby it would have different applications in Scotland, Wales and England. As the hon. Gentleman said, there are no local authority elections in Scotland in June, so there is no order on the Table that would combine local authority and European elections in Scotland or Wales. In Scotland, under existing guidelines, matters would still be determined in accordance with Westminster constituencies. I am not too worried about that because it is always good to have a snapshot of how well we are doing in our constituencies when it comes to European elections, but I am concerned about coterminosity in such matters.
It is worth while pointing out that Scotland is one region, according to European elections, and that it is not broken down into Scottish Parliament or Westminster constituencies. It would therefore be of benefit for matters to be determined on a local authority basis so that they would be clearly understood. I hope that the Minister agrees with the Electoral Commission that no new measures should be put in place six months before an election, and that we can have a guarantee that there is no intention of the clause commencing before the European elections next year.

Michael Wills: May I first clarify matters? When the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire referred to Scotland as a region, is that how he sees the position?

Pete Wishart: It is an electoral region for European elections. That is not my definition, but the definition that has been given.

Michael Wills: I am delighted to have given the hon. Gentleman the opportunity for clarification.
I wish to make some general remarks before I deal with the specific concerns that have been raised. The purpose of the clause is to substitute a new definition of local returning officer under the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002, so that the local returning officers for European parliamentary elections held in England, Wales and Scotland are returning officers for local authority elections in those parts of the United Kingdom rather than the returning officers for the United Kingdom parliamentary elections.
That change, together with a subsequent change in secondary legislation made under the 2002 Act, will enable future European parliamentary elections to be administered on a permanent basis by local authority returning officers along the lines of local authority areas, which will assist in the effective administration of European parliamentary elections. I can confirm to the hon. Member for Epping Forest, who I am sure will be fascinated by such matters, that such a change was not suggested by the European Commission, but by election administrators. They welcome the change because it will ease the complexities in running European elections and will provide certainty in their planning. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute gave a good illustration of that.
In response to concerns raised by various people, including members of the Electoral Commission, we cannot be certain at this stage exactly when the Bill will receive Royal Assent. We certainly cannot be certain that it will receive it in time for the provision on boundaries to be implemented for the European elections on 4 June 2009. We have therefore been exploring other options. After consultation, we decided to exercise powers under the Representation of the People Act 1983 and to make an order that will move the date of local government elections in England in May 2009 to the date of the European elections in June 2009. That order has now been made, after debates in both Houses.
Under that order, we have made the necessary modifications to the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002, and the regulations made under that Act, to enable the European elections in England 2009 to be administered on local government boundaries. There are no scheduled local government elections in May 2009 in Scotland and Wales, nor are there any powers to refine the definition of local returning officer under secondary legislation so that European elections in Scotland and Wales are run at a local level by local authority returning officers. We are exploring with colleagues in Scotland and Wales whether it may be possible to deal with the issue within the existing legislative framework, but I assure the Committee that we shall not commence the clause in 2009 for the European elections. However, the change will provide certainty on the issue for the future European parliamentary elections, and I hope that the Committee will support it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 13 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Nicholas Winterton: Before we come to the Government new clauses, I remind the Committee that we are scheduled to conclude our deliberations on the Bill at 4 oclock on Thursday, which leaves approximately nine hours of further debate, if we work to the normal hours of a Public Bill Committee. I am entirely impartial, but I feel from time to time that it is helpful to remind the Committee of the programme motion and of the timetable. [Hon. Members: Hear, hear.] I am grateful to hon. Members for that indication of support.

New Clause 17

Disposal of election documents in Scotland
In the 1983 Act
(a) in section 63 (breach of official duty), in subsection (3)(b), the words sheriff clerk, are omitted;
(b) in Schedule 1 (parliamentary elections rules), for rule 58 there is substituted
58 (1) This rule modifies rules 55 to 57 in relation to elections in Scotland.
(2) In relation to such elections
(a) the documents mentioned in rule 55(1)
(i) are not to be forwarded by the returning officer as required by that rule,
(ii) instead, are to remain in the returning officers custody (and be endorsed by the officer as required by that rule),
(b) the references in rules 56 and 57 to the relevant registration officer are to be read as references to the returning officer (and rule 55(1A) is to be disregarded),
(c) the reference in rule 57(1) to the documents to be retained is to be read as a reference to the documents remaining in the returning officers custody under sub-paragraph (a)(ii)..[Mr. Wills.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Michael Wills: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment No. 127.

Michael Wills: I shall be brisk. The purpose of the new clause and the amendment is to transfer responsibility for storage and provision of access to UK parliamentary election records and documents in Scotland, including the marked register, from sheriff clerks to the parliamentary returning officer. The overall aim of the provision is to improve access to the documents, particularly for parliamentary colleagues.
After a Westminster election has been contested in Scotland, election material, including the marked register, is sent by the constituency returning officers to a local sheriff clerk for safe keeping. The sheriff clerk is obliged to make some of the material available for public inspection and to destroy all the material after a year, unless otherwise ordered. However, there have been difficulties with the current arrangements, including around access and the fees to be charged, and sheriff clerks offices do not feel that they are set up to carry out those functions effectively.
The change will bring Scotland more into line with the position in England and Wales, where local authorities, through electoral registration officers or acting returning officers, are responsible for those functions by virtue of the Electoral Administration Act 2006, as well as for existing arrangements in Scotland for local government and European election records.
The new provision has the full support of stakeholders in Scotland, including electoral administrators, political parties and the Electoral Commission.

Eleanor Laing: The new clause seems perfectly reasonable, but I always have to question Ministers when they say, Such and such a measure brings Scotland more closely into line with the rest of the United Kingdom. As a principle, I do not see why Scotland has to be brought into line with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Michael Wills: I was not suggesting anything other than that the people in Scotland have asked us to do this and we are responding to their wishes.

Eleanor Laing: I thank the Minister for that explanation, which I entirely accept.

Andrew Tyrie: That is what they said in 1707.

Eleanor Laing: If my hon. Friend mentions 1707 in the same vein, I understand why. I was merely suggesting that sometimes it would be good if the rest of the United Kingdom came into line with Scotland, which has an excellent legal system and many other excellent institutions.

Alan Reid: I cannot resist asking the hon. Lady whether she believes that that should also be the case for local government electoral systems.

Eleanor Laing: I understand why the hon. Gentleman asks the question, but in that it would not be best for the rest of the United Kingdom to come into line with Scotland. I was thinking more along the lines of the excellent Scottish legal system, which is based on extremely good principles that have lasted many centuries

Nicholas Winterton: Order. I am not allowing this debate. Please let us concentrate on the Government new clause.

Eleanor Laing: On the Government new clause, I give way to the Minister.

Michael Wills: I am afraid, Sir Nicholas, that I was about to divert from the new clause.

Nicholas Winterton: I am glad you did not.

Eleanor Laing: We support the Government new clause, with the caveat that, as a principle, it is not always right to bring Scotland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom, just for the sake of it. I declare an interest and admit a bias, as I am a Scots lawyer. That is the problem. Having made my small protest on principle, I accept that this is something that the electoral administrators and others in Scotland have asked for. It makes perfect sense and we support the new clause.

Alan Reid: I, too, support the new clause. To make a more streamlined administration, it makes sense that, if a returning officer is in charge of all aspects of an election, he or she should also be in charge of what happens to the documents after polling day.
The Minister referred to problems of access with the sheriff courts and with fees. I can confirm those, having experienced similar problems. The new clause, combined with an order passed recently on the fee structure, will improve the administration. I have one question for him: is it the Governments intention to introduce legislation so that documents are dealt with in the same way after Scottish Parliament elections?

Pete Wishart: I very much agree with the new clause. Historically, the sheriff clerk has looked after the documents because he was given the task of ensuring that the electoral register was compiled. There is a good case for saying that that task should be returned to returning officers and local authority chief executives. That is what we want in Scotland and it is something I particularly support.
My question for the Minister is along the same lines as the question asked by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute: what happens to the Scottish Parliament? As far as I understand it, an amendment would have to be made to the Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) Order 2007, so that the practice could be introduced for the Scottish Parliament as well. That prompts the question, why is Westminster making these tinkering amendments to Scottish elections? We have had the Gould report in the last few months, which addressed the biggest post-war electoral disaster

Alan Reid: The SNP won.

Pete Wishart: About 147,000 voters were disfranchised. I am disappointed at the hon. Gentlemans flippant remark.
Almost 150,000 people were disfranchised during the Scottish Parliament elections. That suggests to me more than anything that the powers and responsibilities for arranging Scottish elections should be returned to the Scottish Parliament, instead of having these little orders coming through Westminster to ensure that we are up to speed on new electoral law. I want the Minister to confirm that there will be an opportunity for local authority chief executives in Scotland to be responsible for the Scottish Parliament elections, as well as for the Westminster elections.

Andrew Tyrie: I have one brief point to make. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it, we are talking about the storage of election materialif there is a row, we will have something to refer to afterwards.

Michael Wills: And access.

Andrew Tyrie: And access, indeed.
We are changing the norm only with respect to Scotland. I do not want to detain the Committee, but I have thought for a long time about the access provisions in England and Scotlandwe have been discussing bringing Scotland into line with the rest of the United Kingdomand wondered whether the arrangements that we have for the rest of the United Kingdom are the right ones. I raise that in the context of what my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest referred to earlierthe so-called hanging chads issue.
Will the Minister consider taking a look at the so-called sunshine provisions that operate in a number of states in the United States? Those provisions enable a much higher level of access to information than is available under most UK law, and they can provide a high level of reassurance about the integrity of an election result. I do not know whether that was considered in the Gould report, because I confess that I have not read anything other than summaries of it, but I suspect that it may have been alluded to as part of that advice.

Michael Wills: In relation to the points made by the hon. Members for Argyll and Bute and for Perth and North Perthshire, the intention is to make similar provision for Scottish Parliament election records and access through Scottish secondary legislation. I understand that that is likely to be the Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) Order 2010. The intention is also to apply revised access provisions as provided for under sections 42 to 44 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006.
I will resist the temptation to pursue the other points raised by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire. With great reluctance, I restrain myself on that, but I am sure that we shall return to the subject.
On the point made by the hon. Member for Chichester, I am ideologically disposed towards sunshine and am happy to consider the matter. If I may, I shall investigate further and write to him, as I think that it is slightly outside the Committees remit, but I am interested in what he has to say.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 18

Filling vacant European Parliament seats in Northern Ireland
(1) In section 5 of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 (c. 24) (filling vacant seats), after subsection (3) there is inserted
(4) As regards a seat in Northern Ireland, the regulations may, in specified circumstances, require it to be filled as follows
(a) where the previous MEP stood in the name of a registered party when elected (or most recently elected), by a person nominated by the nominating officer of that party;
(b) where paragraph (a) does not apply but the previous MEP gave a notice in accordance with regulations under this Act naming one or more persons as substitutes, by a person so named.
(5) In subsection (4)
nominating officer, in relation to a registered party, means the person registered as its nominating officer under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 in the Northern Ireland register (within the meaning of that Act);
registered party means a party registered under that Act in that register;
the previous MEP, in relation to a vacancy, means the person who was the MEP immediately before the vacancy arose.
(2) Regulations containing provision made by virtue of this section may specify that the provision has effect in relation to any seat that is vacant at the time the provision comes into force and in respect of which notice of a by-election has not been published at that time..[Mr. Wills.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Michael Wills: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment (a), at end of new subsection (4)(a) insert
from a list of up to three persons who are not disqualified to serve as an MEP and whose names and electoral numbers had been submitted along with the nomination papers of the previous MEP at the previous election..
Amendment (b), in new subsection (4)(b) leave out from apply to end and insert
, by the highest ranking person who is not disqualified to serve as an MEP and whose name and electoral number had been submitted on an ordered list of up to three persons along with the previous MEPs nomination papers at the previous election..
Government amendment No. 128.

Michael Wills: The new clause facilitates reform of the system for filling vacant European parliamentary seats in Northern Ireland. It is important because Northern Ireland does not operate a party list system. Under section 5 of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002, vacant seats can be filled only by having a by-election.
European elections in Northern Ireland are held under the single transferable vote form of proportional representation. Concerns have been raised with us that a by-election under that system has the potential to provide for the disproportionate representation of certain parties. That is a particular issue in the context of Northern Ireland, where proportionate representation is of real importance.
The Northern Ireland political parties and other interested groups expressed concerns about the current system and requested that the Government explore options for reform. That is why we have introduced the new clause. We have consulted all the relevant parties. They are all content with the proposals. We have consulted the chief electoral officer for Northern Ireland, who is also content. We therefore believe that people are generally content with the proposals.
Earlier this year, the Government proposed that the nominating officer of the political party in whose name the Member of the European Parliament stood when elected should be able to nominate a replacement to fill a vacant European parliamentary seat. Generally, electors vote for representatives of political parties because they support the partys position on certain matters, in line with the partys manifesto. However much we as individuals would all like to believe that that was otherwise, we generally accept that it is the position. Therefore, should a vacancy arise, it makes sense for that party to decide who should fill the seat.

Andrew Turner: The Minister seems to think that the choice of electors would be the same two years on. It may be different. What is he doing about that?

Michael Wills: I will come to precisely that point. There is no perfect system in such a circumstance, and I stress that it is relatively unlikely that a vacancy will arise. It is possible, but most of the time Members of the European Parliament see through their full term. As we may see in further debate on the issue, the alternatives also create problems in the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests.
It makes sense for the party to decide who should fill the seat. Under that system, Members of the European Parliament who did not belong to a political party when elected could submit a list of substitutes when returned, which could be used to fill the seat and could be modified as necessary.
The proposals were the subject of a full public consultation, and they received strong support among the Northern Ireland parties and other interested groups, so new clause 18 amends section 5 of the 2002 Act to add proposed new subsection (4), enabling regulations to be made that provide for the nominating officer of the relevant political party to nominate a replacement Member of the European Parliament in the event that a European Parliament seat held by that party becomes vacant.
I should point out to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight the fact that in a democratic system voters elect Members of Parliament or Members of the European Parliament for the full term. What he suggests would in some sense compromise that principle. I recognise that the issue is difficult, and can be debated either way, but I ask him to reflect on that fundamental democratic principle. We do not shift our position on who should remain in Parliament on the basis of opinion polls. That may or may not be a good thing, but it is the system that operates.

Andrew Turner: Will the Minister give way?

Michael Wills: I am happy to, although I suspect that we shall diverge a little from the clause and Northern Ireland.

Nicholas Winterton: Not for long.

Andrew Turner: Without going off the trail of Northern Ireland, if a Westminster Member died there would be a by-election. Is that going to change?

Michael Wills: No. As I have explained to the hon. Gentleman, we are dealing with a different system of elections in Northern Ireland. We have first past the post for parliamentary elections to Westminster, but we also have a different system in this context, and views will differ on its merits. In the specific context of Northern Ireland, that system and the methods in place to replace Members of the European Parliament, should they die or otherwise become unavailable to continue their term of office, could lead to specific problems. That is what the new clause is intended to deal with.
We have consulted widely on the new clause in Northern Ireland and have made provision in it for regulations to be made to permit Members of the European Parliament who did not belong to a political party when they were returned to submit a list from which a replacement MEP could, if required, be selected. Hon. Members will know that replacements for seats vacated by MEPs from a registered party in Great Britain are filled from the partys list and no by-election is held. The proposed change will align Northern Ireland closer with that principle.
Amendment No. 128 simply provides for new clause 18 to come into effect on Royal Assent. Regulations will then be required to give full effect to the changes.

Alan Reid: I draw the Ministers attention to proposed new subsection (4)(b), which the new clause will insert in section 5 of the 2002 Act, which deals with the death of someone elected as an independent.
The Minister mentioned the possibility of a list being used in that case, but there is nothing in the new clause to determine who on the list would be nominated. If the independent MEP died having only submitted a list, who would decide which person on the list would be nominated in his place?

Michael Wills: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those remarks; he raises an important point. The process is difficult with independents, as he says. We intend to cover the point in more detail in regulations, and I hope that the Committee will bear with us on that.
The issue is complicated and we must bear in mind the very specific circumstances of Northern Ireland. However, we intend that independent MEPs in that context will be able to submit a list of substitutes when they are returned. That list may be changed by the independent Member by notifying the chief electoral officer during the term.
I hope that the Committee will support the new clause and amendment No. 128, so that in the event of a vacancy arising during a term, the views of the people of Northern Ireland will continue to be represented proportionately in the European Parliament.

Alan Reid: I support amendments (a) and (b). I want to say at the outset that I believe that the single transferable vote system is the best and fairest system of election. I am delighted that it is used in Northern Ireland European elections and wish that exactly the same system were used in the rest of the United Kingdom. However, I accept that nothing is perfect, and that there is one imperfection with the single transferable vote, which is how vacancies are handled.
There are two obvious options: one is a by-election, which is how the law stands in Northern Ireland, and the other is nomination, as Government new clause 18 provides. The problem with a by-election is that even if everybody voted for exactly the same party that they voted for in the previous general election, somebody from a different party could be elected if the vacancy had occurred because of the death or resignation of someone representing a party that had not got the most votes in that constituency. That is the problem that can arise with by-elections under STV.
The system of nomination also has defects: there is no public scrutiny of the person who becomes the MEP, and it also lays the way open for political parties to nominate a well known public figure at the election. If that well known public figure got elected, they could resign a few days later and be replaced by someone totally unknown to the electorate.
In most circumstances, a by-election is the best way to fill a vacancy under STV, which is what the Scottish Parliament decided when it introduced the STV for local government in Scotland. That system has worked well. As I said earlier, even if people voted the same way as in the previous election, that could result in someone from a different party getting elected. We are all aware that, even under first past the post, by-elections are different beasts from general elections. A significant number of by-electionslocal government and parliamentary by-electionsresult in someone from a different party being elected.
Normally, I prefer the STV system to fill vacancies in a by-election. However, Northern Ireland is different, as the Minister said. We need to ensure that we balance the interests of the whole community in Northern Ireland. All our European elections in Northern Ireland have resulted in two Unionists and one nationalist being elected. A problem could arise if the nationalist MEP died or resigned. The by-election would almost certainly result in a Unionist being elected, so we would have three Unionists and no nationalists in the European Parliament.
In the peculiar circumstances of Northern Ireland, I agree with the Government on using nomination to fill the vacancy. We tabled amendments (a) and (b) because the Governments new clause will allow political parties to nominate somebody who will go through no public scrutiny. We all know that parties put forward prospective candidates. There are circumstances in which the media questions that candidate, or something arises in that candidates background that causes the candidate to withdraw. Even in list systemsparties put forward lists for the European Parliamentthe media can question someone lower down the list even though that person has no chance of getting elected. If anything damaging is said by that person, it might damage the political partys chances of winning votes in the election.
It is important that the people who are nominated to fill vacancies are known to the electorate before they cast their votes in the European election. That is why we have tabled amendments (a) and (b). Amendment (a) refers to the circumstances in which somebody representing a political party has been elected. Along with that person, there would have to be three possible substitutes nominated. Their names would be published so that the electorate knew that if they were voting for that person, there would be a possibility that one of the three nominated substitutes could become the MEP if that person died or resigned. Therefore, when a vacancy arose, the political party would choose one name from the list of three.
Our amendment would not allow for that political party to add other people to the list. The important thing is that anybody who becomes an MEP should be known to the electorate at the time of the original election. That would be the effect of our amendment.
We have not said that the list should be ordered because there could be problems if the person at the top of the list defected to another party or became seriously ill. We have said only that the three possible substitutes should be known at the time of the election.
Amendment (b) relates to independence, which I raised with the Minister earlier. In this case, the list must be ordered. If the independent candidate dies, there is no wayunless they wrote something in their willthat they can come back from the grave and decide which of the three substitutes should become the elected representative. The Minister said that that matter would be tackled by secondary legislation, but the best way to tackle it would be to accept amendment (b). At the time of his election, the independent candidate would submit an ordered list of three people. If a vacancy arose, it would be filled by the highest ranking surviving person on that list.
The Government new clause sets the right principles of nomination, but I urge the Government to accept amendments (a) and (b). Potential MEPs must put themselves forward at election time and undergo public scrutiny. They should not merely be nominated by their party and appear from nowhere after the vacancy has arisen.

Eleanor Laing: It is strange to debate the reintroduction of a sort of hereditary principle as part of the Bill, but that is really what new clause 18 brings about. It would save a lot of time and difficulty if, when standing for election, each of us could say, If I do not make it to the end of this Parliament, I would like so and so to take my place. Many political parties have worked like that in the past, but I am delighted that none of us work like that now. Of course, I see why the Government want to introduce the provision in respect of Northern Ireland, and I support what they are trying to do. That is perfectly reasonable.
We support amendments (a) and (b) as proposed by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute. They produce greater clarityagain, I return to that pointabout how the system would work. In recent weeks until 4 November, newspapers around the world were full of the succession question: if John McCain were elected as President of the United States, would Sarah Palin take on that role in the event of a catastrophic event that removed John McCain? It seems thatagainst the better judgment of some of usthe people of the United States decided, for some unfathomable reason, that that succession was not to be risked. Actually, that is not correct. The reason was not unfathomable; it took up thousands of columns in newspapers throughout the world.
When the hon. Gentleman was speaking, it struck me that this is the same principle. If we elect a person, we should know who would take over that position should they not complete a term in office. Normally, our democratic system depends on by-elections. If it were not for them, we would surely get bored between electionsthey are an essential part of our system.
I support what the hon. Gentleman has said and I hope that the Government will consider the amendments favourably as they would clarify what would happen under new clause 18. I am also concerned about what is meant by the phrase specified circumstances. New clause 18 refers to certain issues occurring in specified circumstances, but what are they? The lack of transparency of new clause 18 was the issue that concerned me most. However, when someone votes, they should know what substitutes the elected representative has put in place, as they would perhaps subsequently become the elected representative for that particular place. The voter ought to know that. It is not fair to ask a voter to go into the polling booth and elect Mr. A without knowing that he carries Mrs. B with him. It is wrong for that information not to be given to a voter. It would be perfectly possible to put that information before a voter in the two specific circumstances referred to in amendments (a) and (b), while keeping the Governments overall intention of maintaining the balance within the specific unusual circumstances of the Northern Ireland elections. We all understand and support that intention.
The other slightly worrying thing is that the basis of new clause 18 is the assumption that people vote on party lines alone and not on other factors related to a candidate. I accept that the Minister put that forward as a reasonable argument and that people do largely vote on party lines. However, sometimes the particular candidate matters as well. I am always suspicious of giving political parties more power and taking that power away from the individualfor example, the list system for European elections gives far more power to a political party and takes power away from the individual. If power is taken away from the individual, it is taken away from the voter because if the voter does not know who is accountable, they cannot get rid of that person. The voter therefore has less power and the political party has more power.
Once again, we come back to the basis of our democracy, which is what the Bill is about. The way in which our democracy works is the basis of our democracy. The more power that is given to political parties and the less power that is given to the individual and the voter, the weaker the democratic system is because it is much more difficult for the people to speak. It is much more difficult for the people to be heard if the panoply of party political power gets in the way. Having said that, I reiterate that we understand why there are special circumstances in Northern Ireland. If the clause were to apply to the rest of the United Kingdom, it would be totally and utterly unacceptable. However, for the special circumstances in Northern Ireland, it is acceptable. The measure is much improved by amendments (a) and (b) and I hope that the Government will take those seriously.

Nicholas Winterton: May I assist the Committeeparticularly the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute? I say this, of course, before the Minister has replied to the debate, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to press one or both of his amendments to a Division, he will need to make it clear during the debate. As I say, the Minister is yet to reply, but I have to advise him that if he does not make it clear, the Chair will proceed to put the question on adding the clause to the Bill straight away. I hope that will help the hon. Gentleman to make up his mind. Of course, we now depend on the Ministers reply.

Michael Wills: I shall be happy to give way to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute at any point during my relatively brief remarks. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Epping Forest for their understanding of the special circumstances in Northern Ireland. We all accept that. Unfortunately, like the people of the United States of America, I shall reject the advice of the hon. Lady.
The amendments will more carefully align the method of filling seats with the current method of filling vacancies in the Northern Ireland Assembly where a list of up to six possible substitutes can be submitted prior to the election. However, hon. Members may be aware that the Government recently laid an order to change the method for filling vacancies in the Assembly to one similar to that proposed in new clause 18. When consulting on possible changes to the method of filling vacant European parliamentary seats, the Northern Ireland Office also consulted on changes to the method of filling vacant Assembly seats. The consultation paper noted that the current substitutes method used to fill seats in the Assembly can be problematic in situations where those designated as substitutes are unwilling or unable to fill the seat when the vacancy arises, particularly if they have assumed other responsibilities during the Assembly term or if other factors have emerged since they were first listed as a substitute. Indeed, the person may have defected from the party to which they belonged when they were listed as a substitute.
The vast majority of respondents to the consultations, including the four largest political parties in Northern Ireland, agreed that reform was needed. With that in mind, I hope that the Committee will agree that it is not appropriate now that the system has been changed to reintroduce a system for filling

David Howarth: I am interested in what the Minister is saying. Can he give any instances in which the problem to which he refers actually happened, and what the resolution was?

Michael Wills: It is not so much whether it has actually happened. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that there is a possibility that it could happen and, as we have heard many times in this Committee, we must legislate for reasonable possibilities as well. With that in mindgiven that we have conducted the consultation and that the four largest political parties in Northern Ireland agree that the changes should be made to the Northern Ireland Assemblythe changes in new clause 18 would align the method for filling vacancies in the Northern Ireland Assembly with that for filling vacancies in the European Parliament. It seems almost perverse to accept amendments that would return to a system that the four largest political parties in Northern Ireland want to change.

David Howarth: Just to put it on the record, it does not have the consent of the fifth largest party, the Alliance party. There is another way out of the problem. France, I believe, has a supplÃ(c)ant system for elections to the National Assembly. A party can put forward a supplÃ(c)ant, and if the supplÃ(c)ant does not want to do the job, a by-election must be held. That risk is up to the party.

Michael Wills: We have discussed by-elections, and I was careful to say the four largest political parties in Northern Ireland. That is an important consideration. As I said, it would be perverse not to seek to align the two systems, and I very much hope[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman will be interested to hear that I have just been informed that, although the consultation was widespread, the Alliance party did not respond to it, which might account for the fact that it is not part of the consensus. However, I am not sure that it would be anything other than perverse to resist the amendments, and I hope that the Committee will not do so.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 19

CORE information and action to be taken by electoral registration officers
(1) Section 2 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 (c. 22) (co-ordinated on-line record of electors: use of information) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (6)
(a) in paragraph (b), after is requested there is inserted in respect of the same address or;
(b) in paragraph (c), for acts as there is substituted is appointed as, or votes as,.
(3) After subsection (6) there is inserted
(6A) A CORE scheme may require that where a CORE keeper informs an ERO as mentioned in subsection (5), or informs an ERO of any suspicions that the CORE keeper has concerning the commission of an offence under the 1983 Act or other impropriety
(a) the ERO must take such steps (if any) as appear to the ERO to be appropriate in response to being so informed;
(b) the ERO must notify the CORE keeper of the steps taken (or of the reasons for not taking any), within such period and in such form and manner as is specified
(i) in the scheme, or
(ii) by the CORE keeper in accordance with the scheme.
(4) In subsection (7)(b), after relating to the person there is inserted , or to any such suspicions as are mentioned in subsection (6A),.
(5) In subsection (11)
(a) for must not authorise there is substituted must not
(a) authorise;
(b) at the end there is inserted
(b) authorise one ERO to supply information to another..[Mr. Wills.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Michael Wills: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment No. 129.

Michael Wills: I am moving this clause now because it is necessary for the successful implementation of the co-ordinated online record of electors scheme, and if we do not pass it, there may be delays in the implementation of the scheme. Subsection (2) expands the circumstances in which the CORE keeper must inform an electoral registration officer that improprieties involving electoral records or potential absent voter fraud may have arisen.
As for postal votes, the CORE keeper will now be required to notify electoral registration officers when more than a specified number of postal votes are requested for a single address, as well as for a redirection address. That is in response to feedback from electoral registration officers that the number of postal vote redirections is minimal and that there would be greater value in looking at all instances when large numbers of postal votes have been requested to close the opportunity for postal vote fraud to occur.
The new clause also provides that the CORE keeper will be required to notify electoral registration officers when the same person is appointed or votes as proxy for more than two electors. Being appointed as proxy for more than two electors is not in itself an offence, but voting as proxy for more than two electors who are not close relatives is. The new clause will provide an opportunity for electoral registration officers to remind those appointed as proxies of the legal position.
Subsection (3) of the new clause extends the Secretary of States order-making powers in respect of a CORE scheme order so that he or she can require an electoral registration officer to take steps, if any, that seem to the electoral registration officer to be an appropriate response to a notification from the CORE keeper. It will be the responsibility of the electoral registration officer to decide what steps should be taken or whether steps should be taken at all. That is consistent with the nature of the statutory appointment of electoral registration officers, in that they are ultimately responsible for their own electoral registers. When deciding how to respond to a notification from the CORE keeper, electoral registration officers will be free to make best use of their professional judgment, local knowledge and experience.
Subsection (3) also requires electoral registration officers to report to the CORE keeper about either the steps taken in response to information provided by the CORE keeper or the reasons for not taking steps. That will enable the CORE keeper to maintain an overview of how the CORE scheme is running and ensure consistency throughout the scheme. Subsection (4) of the new clause allows the CORE keeper to provide relevant information to an electoral registration officer when the CORE keeper has a suspicion that an offence has been committed or may have been committed under the Representation of the People Act 1983 or that there has been some other impropriety.
Subsection (5) of the new clause allows a CORE scheme to provide for the electoral registration officers to share information with each other for the purposes of responding to information supplied by the CORE keeper under the provisions. That will allow electoral registration officers to work together across electoral boundaries for the purpose of taking steps in response to notifications from the CORE keeper. The new clause is essential to the detection of fraud and in making sure that the prevention functions of the CORE scheme work effectively. It will ensure that the CORE scheme can be delivered without unnecessary delay.

Eleanor Laing: I am pleased that the Minister has tabled the new clause because we support all efforts that are made by the Government to stop electoral fraud. As I have said several times, we want the workings of our democratic system to be absolutely watertight and we are in favour of every reasonable measure taken to ensure that that is brought about. When the CORE scheme was introduced, we supported it for that reason.
However, I am worried that, in the few years since the scheme was introduced, it has not achieved anything. Little has been done, but it has cost a lot of money. If that money were invested in improving our record on electoral fraud, I would be all in favour of it, but we have seen a lot of money spent and little result. The Minister might explain that there is a long time lag in the spending of money and the setting up of some parts of the CORE scheme. If he does, I will have to accept that. However, when we first discussed the matter during consideration of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 some three years ago, we all hoped that something along the lines of CORE would happen. We hoped that by the time we were looking at another general election and the important European elections that we are about to face, the CORE scheme might be achieving something.
However, in a written answer to a question that I put to the Minister a couple of weeks ago, we discover that to date, the staff costs of CORE are £2.78 million and that £1.73 million has been spent
to enable local authorities electoral management systems to output data in an agreed Election Mark Up Language (EML) format.[Official Report, 23 October 2008; Vol. 481, c. 559W.]
I accept that those sums, and the other several thousands of pounds that have been spent in the intervening period, are necessary. One does not get the results if one does not invest in the technologyI am in favour of that. However, I have a couple of questions to ask the Minister in this respect.

Michael Wills: To clarify the point, is the hon. Lady suggesting that we should not spend this money on getting an agreed system for outputting data?

Eleanor Laing: No, not at all. I am saying that if we can see that this expenditure is investment in a good system to combat fraud, we are certainly in favour of it. I am not suggesting that it is an enormous amount of money; it is a few million pounds, and when covering the whole country, I accept that that is what these things cost. Every penny of taxpayers money spent in this way will be well spent if it brings about the result that we hope for.
However, two aspects in particular concern me. I am sure that the Minister is aware of these points and will be able to address them. The first is that, generally, the Governments record on investing in technology has not been good. In the Ministry of Justice alone, several projects have gone way over budget and have not achieved what they ought to have achieved. I am not suggesting that that has yet happened with the CORE scheme. I also appreciate that the Minister has not had responsibility for this area of policy development for very long, so I do not hold him personally responsible, or suggest that he has not carried out his duties properly. However, we have had many examples of massive expenditure on Government technology, on computer systems that do not work, on new technology which promises the earth and where Ministers announce in the House, We will be able to achieve x, y and z because we have spent £10 million on a, b and c, and it does not happen. People rely on technology and it does not work. Not only do the Government not achieve what they set out to achieve, but they are often in a worse position than they were before they spent all the money on the technology.
I hope that that will not happen with CORE. I am not suggesting that the evidence we have so far indicates that the whole CORE project is likely to fail and I seriously hope that it does not. We want this project to work; we want the fight against electoral fraud to be won and we will do all we can to support the Government in that respect. I merely draw the Ministers attention to the fact that some of his colleagues have been very unsuccessful in bringing about good end results in the technology projects that they have started. I hope that he will be able to assure us that vast amounts of money will not be spent on CORE to no avail. I appreciate that he may have good explanations of why it has not achieved anything yet, but I would like to give him the opportunity to say what it will achieve in future, hopefully without the spending of further enormous amounts of taxpayers money.
My second concern is the security of data, another matter on which the Government have a bad track record. Again, it is not this Minister and this project that have been in troublefar from it. Let us hope that they never will be. However, even he must admit that his colleagues in many Departments have been responsible for massive losses of data that should have been kept secure and safeguarded on behalf of the members of the public to whom it related. My one concern[Interruption.]

Nicholas Winterton: Order. Please, one speaker.

Eleanor Laing: Thank you, Sir Nicholas.
My one concern when I first looked at the proposals for a co-ordinated online record of electors was that it was yet another instance of the Government bringing enormous amounts of information to a central point. There is always a danger in that, because, as we have seen with child benefit, many Ministry of Defence information sources, even provisional driving licences and many more examples that I shall not take the Committees time to explore, the more the Government bring vast amounts of information together in a central place, the more risk there is of that information going astray. We do not want that to happen in the case of CORE.
I seek assurances that the Minister has learned from the mistakes of his colleagues and that the data security aspect of the provision will be taken into consideration. It is unimaginable what a catastrophic effect there would be if the information concerned were brought to a central point and then lost. I assume that the technology will be good enough that the information would not be lost for ever, which would be quite ridiculous. If the information got into the wrong hands, even if it were not used for nefarious purposes, it could certainly be used to send so much junk mail that although it might be good for the economic prospects of the Post Office, it certainly would not be good in terms of the amount of paper engendered and the number of trees cut down.
That is just one way that I can think of in which such information could be used. I hope that it would not be, and I sincerely hope that the real purpose of the CORE project will be advanced securely and with good use of taxpayers money and careful regard for the information about individual citizens of this country that will be held in a central point. I seek those assurances merely because we would like to be able to support the Governments new clause.

Michael Wills: First, I congratulate the hon. Lady for managing to make so many generic points out of what is rather a modest little amendment to the CORE provisions, enabling us to tackle fraud even more effectively than we are already tackling it, which I hope is an objective that all of us on the Committee share. None the less, she has raised some interesting points and I will briefly address them.
I start by gently pointing out to the hon. Lady that there may just be a contradiction between the various points that she has raised. On the one hand, she appears to be criticising us for what she described as delaying bringing CORE on stream. On the other hand, she said that she hoped that we would be extremely careful to ensure that money was well spent and that we took great care in ensuring that the data were stored securely. I would like to suggest to her tactfully that the reason that we are proceeding so cautiously and deliberately on this matter is precisely to ensure that we are spending the money to good effect and that the data is stored securely.
I am very happy to take the Committees time in explaining everything that we are doing, but very briefly I would like to point out to the hon. Lady that we are moving forward carefully. We are consulting 468 different electoral registration officers to ensure that they are in a position to store and move the data securely. We are spending the money carefully and I am very glad that she agrees that the money that we have spent so far has been well spent. We will continue to ensure that we get value for money.
The hon. Ladys description of a list of Government failures was, if I may say so, misleading There is no question but that mistakes have been made in Government. Mistakes are also made in the private sector. Those mistakes involve the failure to achieve value for money, projects not coming to fruition in the way that they were originally conceived, and of course matters of data protection. It is a matter of record that the Government have made mistakes, but, as I say, mistakes also happen in the private sector, so I should be grateful if she would reflect on the fact that there is no evidence that the public sector is worse than the private sector in this regard, either in terms of great schemes that did not come to fruition in the way that they were originally conceived, after lots of money had been spent, or in the matter of data protection.
The most recent data losses in the public sector have taken place among private sector contractors working for Government. The real problem with this area is that the technology is moving so much faster than the managerial processes that are in place. I can absolutely assure the Committee that the Government are seized of this issue. In the last year, we have taken radical action to improve our processes. No one can ever guarantee that all data will always be secure, but we are doing our very best and we are certainly moving forward in relation to CORE.
I sense that you are getting slightly impatient about our straying beyond the remit of the clause, Sir Nicholas.

Nicholas Winterton: Indeed, the Chair is.

Eleanor Laing: I am happy to assure the Minister that I fully appreciate that, of course, mistakes occur in the private sector too, but he knows perfectly well that two wrongs do not make a right. Just because the private sector makes mistakes, and sometimes it makes mistakes on behalf of the Government, does not excuse the Government from the responsibility that they have to the taxpayer.

Nicholas Winterton: Order. We have covered this ground adequately. Perhaps the Minister can respond to the debate.

Michael Wills: I will, Sir Nicholas. I just want to say that I entirely agree with the hon. Lady; I was just seeking to correct a misleading impression that she was giving.
However, we have perhaps spent enough time on this particular amendment. I detect a consensus on it. I beg to move the new clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 1

Individual voter registration
(1) The 1983 Act is amended as follows.
(2) In section 10 (maintenance of registers: annual canvass), for subsections (4A) and (4B) there is substituted
(4A) Subject to subsection (4B) below, the information to be obtained by the use of such a form for the purpose of a canvass shall include
(a) the signature of each of the persons in relation to whom the form is completed;
(b) the date of birth of each such person; and
(c) in relation to each such person
(i) his national insurance number or a statement that he does not have one,
(ii) a statement of whether or not he has been resident in the United Kingdom for the whole of the three-month period ending on 15th October in the year in question, and
(iii) any address in the United Kingdom in respect of which he is or has applied to be registered (other than the address in respect of which the form is completed), and the power in subsection (4) above to prescribe a form includes power to give effect to the requirements of the subsection.
(4B) An electoral officer may dispense with the requirement mentioned in subsection (4A)(a) above in relation to any person if he is satisfied that it is not reasonably practicable for that person to sign in a consistent and distinctive way because of any incapacity of his or because he is unable to read..
(3) In section 10A (maintenance of registers: registration of electors)
(a) for subsections (1A) and (1B) there is substituted
(1A) Subject to subsection (1B) below, an application for registration in respect of an address in the United Kingdom shall include
(a) the signature of each of the persons to whom the application relates;
(b) the date of birth of each such person; and
(c) in relation to each person
(i) his national insurance number or a statement that he does not have one,
(ii) a statement of whether or not he has been resident in the United Kingdom for the whole of the three-month period ending on the date of the application, and
(iii) any other address in the United Kingdom in respect of which he is or has applied to be registered, and the power in subsection (1) above to prescribe requirements includes power to give effect to the requirements of this subsection.
(1B) An electoral registration officer may dispense with the requirement mentioned in subsection (1A)(a) above in relation to any person if he is satisfied that it is not reasonably practicable for that person to sign in a consistent and distinctive way because of any incapacity of his or because he is unable to read.,
(b) for subsection (5A) there is substituted
(5A) A persons name is to be removed from the register in respect of any address if
(a) the form mentioned in section 10(4) above in respect of that address does not include all the information relating to him required by virtue of section 10(4A) above; or
(b) the registration officer determines that he is not satisfied with the information relating to that person which was included in that form pursuant to that requirement..
(4) In section 13A (alteration of registers), for subsections (2A) and (2B) there is substituted
(2A) Subject to subsection (2B) below, an application for registration under subsection (1)(a) above in respect of an address in the United Kingdom shall include
(a) the signature of each of the persons to whom the application relates;
(b) the date of birth of each such person; and
(c) in relation to each such person
(i) his national insurance number or a statement that he does not have one,
(ii) a statement of whether or not he has been resident in the United Kingdom for the whole of the three-month period ending on the date of the application, and
(iii) any other address in the United Kingdom in respect of which he is or has applied to be registered, and the power in subsection (1)(a) above to prescribe requirements includes power to give effect to the requirements of this subsection.
(2B) The Chief Electoral Officer may dispense with the requirement mentioned in subsection (2A)(a) above in relation to any person if he is satisfied that it is not reasonably practicable for that person to sign in a consistent and distinctive way because of any incapacity of his or because he is unable to read..[Mrs. Laing.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Eleanor Laing: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment (a), in proposed new subsection (4A)(c) to section 10 leave out sub- paragraph (ii).
Amendment (b), in proposed new subsection (1A)(c) to section 10A leave out sub-paragraph (ii).
Amendment (c), in proposed new subsection (2A)(c) to section 13A leave out sub-paragraph (ii).
New clause 2Registration of British citizens overseas
In section 2 of the Representation of the People Act 1985 (c. 50) (registration of British citizens overseas), after paragraph (3)(b) there is inserted
(ba) the declarants passport number or a statement that the declarant does not have one..
New clause 7Opting in to the edited electoral register
(1) The Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2001 (SI 2001/341) is amended as follows:
(2) In regulation 93 (edited version of the register), for subsection (2) there is substituted
The edited register shall include the name and address of any elector whose details are included in the full register only if a request has been expressly made in the form referred to in section 10(4) of the 1983 Act or in accordance with Regulation 26 above by or on behalf of that elector for his or her name and address to be included on the edited register..
New clause 8Personal identifiers at the ballot box
(1) The Representation of the People Act 1983 (the 1983 Act) Schedule 1 (Parliamentary Election Rules) shall be amended as follows.
(2) The following shall be inserted after Rule 27(1) (ballot paper to be delivered to voter on application)
(1A) A ballot paper shall not be delivered to a voter unless he has produced a specified document to the presiding officer or a clerk.
(1B) Where a voter produces a specified document, the presiding officer or clerk to whom it is produced shall deliver a ballot paper to the voter unless the officer or clerk decides that the document raises a reasonable doubt at to whether the voter is the elector or proxy he represents himself to be.
(1C) Where a voter produces a specified document to a presiding officer and he so decides, he shall refuse to deliver a ballot paper to the voter.
(1D) Where a voter produces a specified document to a clerk and he so decides, he shall refer the matter and produce the document to the presiding officer who shall proceed as if the document has been produced to him in the first place.
(1E) For the purposes of this rule a specified document is one which for the time being falls within the following list
(a) a current passport issued by the government of the United Kingdom or by the government of the Republic of Ireland;
(b) a current licence to drive a motor vehicle granted under Part III of the Road Traffic Act 1972 (or Part III of the Road Traffic Act 1988) (including a provisional licence), or under Article 12 of the Road Traffic (Northern Ireland) Order 1981 or any corresponding enactment for the time being in force;
(c) a credit or debit card with signature;
(d) HM forces identification card;
(e) a medical card with signature on it;
(f) a local authority valid bus pass with signature on it;
(g) a valid book for the payment of allowances, benefits or pensions if it has a signature in it;
(h) a tenant book if it has a signature in it;
(i) a certified copy, or extract, of an entry of marriage issued by a Registrar General, where the voter producing the copy of an extract is a woman married within the period of two years ending with the day of the poll concerned.
In sub-paragraph (i) above a Registrar General means the Registrar General for England and Wales, the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages for Scotland or the Register General for Northern Ireland,
(1F) Regulations may make provision varying the list in paragraph (1E) above (whether by adding or deleting documents or varying any description of document).
(1G) References in this rule to producing a document are to producing it for inspection..
(3) The following shall be inserted after Rule 38(1) (incapacitated voters vote to be marked on ballot paper on application)
(1A) Paragraphs (1A) to (1G) of Rule 37 shall apply in the case of a voter who applies under paragraph (1) above as they apply in the case of a voter who applies under Rule 37(1), but reading references to delivering a ballot paper to a voter as references to causing a voters vote to be marked on a ballot paper..
(4) The following shall be inserted after Rule 39(2) (blind voter to be allowed assistance of companion on application)
(2A) Paragraphs (1A) to (1G) of Rule 37 shall apply in the case of a voter who applies under paragraph (1) above as they apply in the case of a voter who applies under Rule 37(1), but reading references to delivering a ballot paper to a voter as references to granting a voters application..
(5) The following shall be inserted after Rule 40(1) (person entitled to mark tendered ballot paper after another has voted)
(1A) Paragraphs (1A) to (1G) of Rule 37 shall apply in the case of a person who seeks to mark a tendered ballot under paragraph (1) above as they apply in the case of a voter who applies for a ballot paper under Rule 37(1).
(1B) Paragraph (1C) below applies where a presiding officer refuses to deliver a ballot paper to a person under paragraph (1C) of Rule 37 (including that paragraph as applied by Rule 38 or 39 or this Rule).
(1C) The person shall, on satisfactorily answering the questions permitted by law to be asked at the poll, nevertheless be entitled, subject to the following provisions of this Rule, to mark a ballot paper (in these Rules referred to as a tendered ballot paper) in the same manner as any other voter..
(6) The following shall be inserted after Rule 40(4)
(5) A person who marks a tendered ballot paper under paragraph (1C) above shall sign the paper, unless it was marked after an application was refused under Rule 38 or 39.
(6) A paper which is required to be signed under paragraph (5) above and is not so signed shall be void..

Eleanor Laing: New clause 1 was originally in my name, but I then detected that I had made a drafting error, so I tabled amendments (a), (b) and (c) to the new clause. As a procedural matter, therefore, my name no longer appears at the top of new clause 1 and it is in the name of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, who has asked me, on his behalf, to continue to speak to it. For the sake of getting the amendments to the new clause out of the way, I shall begin with amendments (a), (b) and (c) in my name.

Andrew Tyrie: This is about the most important clause that we will consider in the whole of the Bill. It goes to the heart of it. I have seen many of these clauses in past Committees, but we have not yet developed the last word on this. The Government say that they are keen, in principle, on this type of improvement. I take it that we would be amenable to constructive suggestions from the Government to improve the new clause. Is that correct? If they come forward with suggestions, rather than just knocking it out, the Opposition will be constructive.

Eleanor Laing: My hon. Friend asks me a leading question, and of course I agree with him.

Andrew Tyrie: I am not a lawyer, so I am just asking a question.

Eleanor Laing: I, clearly, and not for the first time, have been proved not to be a brilliant parliamentary draftsman, but I did not set out to be. My hon. Friend is right. This is an extremely important group of new clauses on a vital issue. If the Government produce a constructive way forward, we would be happy to co-operate.
I will deal first with the amendments, so that the Committee does not have to puzzle over their meaning. New clause 1, as drafted, is taken from the Northern Ireland legislation, so I made the mistake of leaving in proposed new subsection (4A)(c) (ii), which states:
a statement of whether or not he has been resident in the United Kingdom for the whole of the three-month period ending on 15th October in the year in question, and.
That should not be there, because it is a specific requirement relating to Northern Ireland and it is not necessary in the rest of the United Kingdom. I did not intend to introduce the three-month residency restriction across the rest of the United Kingdomthat would be wrong. Amendment (a) removes that sub-paragraph.
It has not been our intention at any point in the Bill to make it more difficult for people to register, or for people who legitimately ought to be voting to vote. We want to ensure that the franchise is extended to everyone to whom it ought to be extended, with no unnecessary restrictions. The areas to which amendments (a), (b) and (c) refer would have introduced a residency restriction, so I have amended my own new clause. Or, in technical terms, to ensure that the procedure is correct, I have amended the new clause standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon. I hope that the Committee will accept that explanation so that we do not have to waste time debating amendments (a), (b) and (c).

David Kidney: As one who tried to persuade my noble Friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton to include a scheme for individual registration in the 2006 Act, I certainly will not argue against the principle of the amendments, but when the hon. Lady refers to the Northern Ireland model, does she accept that there was a big drop in the number of people registered to vote when the single registration scheme came into effect there? Does she think that, when we design a scheme for the rest of the United Kingdom, we ought to do something in the law to protect against that happening again?

Eleanor Laing: The hon. Gentleman makes at the outset the very point that we have to discuss. That is why the new clause is such an important omission from the Bill. I cannot say that it is an important part of the Bill because it is not in the Bill, but it should be.
I will deal with the hon. Gentlemans point later, but discuss it briefly now. One reason why the legislation was introduced in Northern Ireland while it was still in the early stages of being considered for the remainder of the UK was because it was seen as a necessary way to solve a specific problem in Northern Ireland. It was recognised by the Government and, I believe, all political parties, that the Northern Ireland register was not accurate. It was not intact. It had on it the names of many people who should not have been on it. Indeed, it had on it many names that were not the names of people. It was very much in need of being cleaned up, to put it simply.
Inevitably, if one of the reasons for introducing legislation is to remove names that are not names of people but the names of people long deceased or not yet born or of people who left the country long ago and have no right to vote or that are merely anagrams of other namessomething that was discovered when the matter was examinedgiven that the intent of the legislation as it applied initially in Northern Ireland was to remove superfluous names from the register, by the very nature of the legislation, the outcome was that the number of names on the register was significantly reduced.

Michael Wills: May I clarify this point? Is the hon. Lady asserting that the entire fall in the numbers registered was due to the phenomenon that she described?

Eleanor Laing: No, not the entire fall. I could not possibly assert that, and I certainly could not prove it. It was not entirely for that reason, but we have evidence to show that it was largely for that reason. The Minister cannot argue that, three years ago, his colleagues did not introduce legislation to clean up the Northern Ireland register. I hope that the Government would have been extremely disappointed if there had been no difference in the number of names on it. However, there are significant differences between the way that the register is made and kept in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the UK. I am not asserting that the fall was entirely due to that, and I am happy to address that point later.

Martin Linton: While the main purpose of the legislation was to remove people from the register who should not have been on it, does the hon. Lady accept that there already was a serious problem of under-registration in Northern Ireland, with 29 per cent. of 18 to 24-year-olds and 17 per cent. of people in socio-economic categories D and E not on the register, and that the legislation probably made the problem worse by increasing under-registration among those groups?

Eleanor Laing: I accept the hon. Gentlemans statistics, but he must not forget that there is a statutory duty to register. I am sure that the Minster will correct me if I am wrong, but the present legal framework provides that electoral registration officers in Northern Ireland can impose a fine of up to £1,000 on someone for not registering. Of course, that is not enforced. I am not suggesting that it should be enforced, but the framework is in place to allow that and perhaps it would be a good idea for the Government, through their officials in the electoral registration offices, through the Electoral Commission, or through whichever way they choose, to remind people that they have a duty to register to vote. There is an idea that, Oh dear, a significant part of the population aged between 18 and 25 dont bother to register to vote. Surprise, surprise. A significant part of the population aged 18 to 25 do not bother about very much, because they are at that stage in life where they do not have to, and this is just one of those things. However, it should be remembered that the framework is there to impose the law if the Government choose to do so.

Jonathan Djanogly: My hon. Friend, with the help of the hon. Member for Battersea, has uncovered one of the most disgraceful aspects of our electoral registration system and democracy in this country: hundreds of thousands of people fail to register, thereby breaking the existing law. We are looking to move the law on, but it is important to make the point that the existing law is being broken.

Eleanor Laing: My hon. Friend is correct. I do not think that I have ever seen a Government information programmeleaflets or postersabout this. We see so much Government information: there are glossy brochures on just about everything, coming from every Department. One can hardly turn round without seeing some kind of Government information about something, whether it is teaching our children to read, how to cross the road, or not having water that is too hot running into our bathsthat is done particularly in Scotland, but it is still Government money that pays for it. All that is done, and yet I do not think I have seen any promotion by the Government saying that it is an offence not to register to vote.

Michael Wills: I am sorry to stray, but I hope that the hon. Lady is not suggesting that the literature on babies being scalded is not worth spending money on.

Eleanor Laing: No, of course I am not. It is right to educate people about such important matters, and so it is right to teach people that they have a duty to register to vote. We all often go out on the campaign trail and I assume that every member of the Committee sometimes knocks on peoples doors and asks, Will you vote?. Usually we ask Will you vote for me?, rather than Will you vote? generally, but often the conversation comes round to whether a person votes generally. We find people who say I dont vote, like I dont smoke or I dont eat pasta or I dont ride a bicycle, as if there is no duty to register to vote. It is as if they are asserting that they are in some way morally superior because they do not get involved in the political process, but they will be the first to complain if something goes wrong and their representative has not done anything about it. That is a massive generalisation that I do not propose to back up, but we all meet people who say that they do not vote. It should be up to the Government to tell them that they have a duty to register to vote. If they then choose not to vote, of course every individual has the freedom to choose whether to exercise their vote.

Alan Whitehead: I have listened carefully to the hon. Ladys argument about what happened in Northern Ireland and the what purpose of individual registration was. Does she accept that, after 2005, when a provision was introduced to enable a person to have one years grace on the carry-forward mechanism if they had not re-registered the previous year, virtually the whole reduction in the register that had been experienced previously was reinstated by the increase in votes that took place as a result of that carry-over mechanism? These were real voters, not fake voters, who had been removed from the register. By and large, they were members of the settled population in Northern Ireland, not the younger people whom she referred to, who perhaps had not fulfilled their responsibility to register to vote. Is she saying that all portions of the population should register annually in order to undertake the duty to register, or is she saying that, as is the case throughout the rest of the United Kingdom, there may be some leeway for ensuring that settled communities that do not necessarily have to re-register every year continue to be placed on the electoral register?

Eleanor Laing: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should have different rules in different parts of the country. I accept what he says. It is essential, and it is the purpose of the Bill, to try to make it easier for people to register to vote. He will have heard what I said about service voters earlier this morning. It is essential that everybody who has the right to vote can fulfil the duty to register to vote, and then to vote if they choose to do so.
What I would say about the Northern Ireland situation is that one of the reasons the Government have given over the last several years for not introducing individual voter registration in the rest of the United Kingdom is that they wish to carry out pilots. My argument is that there is no need to carry out pilot schemes, because we have a pilot scheme in a whole country, Northern Ireland, and we can learn from what has happened there. The hon. Gentleman put the point very well.
Other Labour Members have also made good points about the lessons to be learned from Northern Ireland. I am not suggesting for a moment that everything that happened in Northern Ireland is perfect, but I am suggesting that the individual voter registration scheme has been successful there, and that in learning the lessons of what could be improved, the Government should be able to bring all those lessons together and in a short space of time introduce a similar scheme in the rest of the United Kingdom.

Nick Ainger: The hon. Lady has just told the Committee that the Northern Ireland scheme is successful. It depends what criteria one uses to describe successful. Nearly 120,000 people were removed from the electoral roll as a result of the changes, and it was only when the rollover system was introduced that a further 70,000 came back on. That means that there are still at least 40,000 to 50,000 people who are not registered in Northern Ireland. I do not think that that is a success. While individual registration is important, we need a range of other packages to ensure that we encourage people, as she rightly says, to register to vote, so that they can vote.

Eleanor Laing: The hon. Gentlemans comments are amazing. The point of introducing the legislation in Northern Ireland was to take out of the register the names of people who were not people and of people who did not have the right to vote. That system was not democracy, the Government rightly took steps to put it right and we supported them. UK citizens who are responsible enough to exercise their right to vote and make a decisive contribution to deciding who shall govern our country ought to have responsibility for registering themselves to vote. We ought not to make that difficult but, my goodness, it is not very difficult to fill in a form.

Michael Wills: I invite the hon. Lady to respond to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire actually made.

Eleanor Laing: I beg your pardon, Sir Nicholas. If I have missed the point, I should be happy for the hon. Gentleman to make it again.

Nick Ainger: I shall do an encore, Sir Nicholas. My point was about unintended consequences. The individual identifier removed the names that should never have been on the register, as the hon. Lady rightly says, but the unintended consequence was that 120,000 people who should have been on the register no longer were. It was only when further legislation introduced the rollover system, and 70,000 names were added, that we started to return to the previous level of registration. Even now, an awful lot of people in Northern Irelandtens of thousandswho should be on the register are not.

Eleanor Laing: I did not miss the hon. Gentlemans point; I fully understood it. I accept that the drop of 120,000 went too far, and that it was right to introduce further legislation on the rolling register. That brought the number back up by 50,000, meaning that 70,000 had been taken off the register.

Nick Ainger: It is the other way around70,000 went on.

Eleanor Laing: Yes, so the number that came off the register was not 120,000, but 70,000, because 50,000 went back on. This is exactly my point about pilots and about learning from Northern Ireland. There were unintended consequences, as there often are with this type of legislation, but the Government then put the situation right. That is what is important. Can the hon. Gentleman explain where those 70,000 people are and why they do not register?

Nick Ainger: The hon. Lady has already said that there is reluctance among people of certain age groups either to engage in the political process or to believe that they should fill in the form. We all know that there is a certain amount of apathy.

Eleanor Laing: Precisely.

Nick Ainger: The introduction of the individual identifier means that those people, whom we want to encourage to participate in the political process, have denied themselves that. I accept that point.

Nicholas Winterton: Order. Interventions should be short.

Nick Ainger: We must have systems that encourage people who are not registering but who were registering before, as in Northern Ireland at the moment. That is the point.

Eleanor Laing: The hon. Gentleman is arguing beautifully against himself. He used the important word that is the elephant in the roomapathy.

It being One oclock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at half-past Four oclock.